Reality is a relentless ebb and flow of happenings, and most of what is happening outside of ourselves is happening independently of our existence. This is difficult for some of us to see, but it helps to come to terms with the narcissistic traits that can disguise themselves as frustration, annoyance, envy and even hatred.

It's worth repeating for emphasis: A lot of the times, it’s not about us. People are going through their own reality tunnels, trying to figure out their own lives, problems, insecurities, neuroses and temperaments. Let’s cut other humans some slack when they react in ways that seem unaligned with how we expect the world to behave. Even if someone says or acts in a way that makes us feel inferior or challenged, can we extract value from it? If not, we can ask ourselves if someone else’s opinion of us holds more weight than our own? If the answer is yes, then we must be grateful for this realization and admit to ourselves that we have some corrective inner work to do.

We all know what it feels like to have our energies amplified or drained based on what we do or who we interact with. Our emotional and mental well being suffer from lack of energetic consistency in the face of what we experience on a daily basis. It is important to construct an emotional fence around ourselves to protect us from other people’s ever changing states.

Sometimes, what we receive from other people is directly related to us. Perhaps we are unaware that we are behaving in ways that bother or even hurt other people. Perhaps our words, behaviours, or energy are not fully aligned with our intentions, which results in friction with our external world. In this case, let’s strive for awareness rather than emotional blame and externalization. The skill to differentiate between what happens to us and what we do is something that will become easier as we learn to better tune into our own intuitiveness.

We can benefit from reminding ourselves of the nature of boundaries and untamed reactivity. This way we can become better at controlling what happens externally, by allowing the stirred energy within some space to settle and dissipate, instead of constantly feeding the fire of externally inflicted poison.

Not taking things personally doesn’t mean we shouldn’t receive input from the external world; nor does this mean that our reactive feelings, pains and intuitions are illusory and don’t matter. They do – and they are crucial to the integrity of our direct human experience. We can, however, largely benefit from creating space between our internal subjective experience, and the external triggers that seem to target our emotional state like a flock of sharp arrows flung by everything and everyone around us.

When we recognize this, a shift in perception happens, and our mental windshield wipers will start to clear the emotional fog that dull our intuitions. Destructive reactivity and self-defence will gradually be replaced by grace, peace and compassion.